Murder at Moot Point

by Marlys Millhiser

  “I know you’re going to think we’re all a bunch of eccentrics here, but they like to clean up the roadsides. Most evenings after supper, if the weather permits, you’ll see them out picking up litter and collecting cans and glass for recycling. Everyone needs something to do.”

  “Gladys wasn’t at the dinner either,” Charlie noted as they passed the Scandia. “I suppose she has to mind the store.”

  “Oh, my, she wouldn’t be seen at the senior citizens’ dinners—not that she isn’t of age. But she thinks if she doesn’t admit it no one will know. And the weekday dinners are subsidized and she really isn’t at all poor. But I feel, and so do Norma and Mary, that the more numbers at those dinners the more likely funds will continue to be provided for them. And there are some who really depend on them for a decent meal every day and others who are shut-ins and the rest of us carry meals to them. So it’s a very important service we all should support. Gladys and Olie don’t believe in subsidizing anyone less fortunate than themselves.” Clara Peterson’s lips tightened and she led Charlie up three steps to the front door of her neighbors’ trailer house.

  Charlie had kept her head down hoping she wouldn’t run into any member of the Glick family or the sheriff’s department and was surprised to have made it this far. Clara knocked. The sound of the TV within indicated the sisters were home.

  “They have a new VCR,” Clara apologized and knocked again. “They record all the late night shows they can’t stay up long enough to see and watch them on weekends when their soaps aren’t on. I can’t stand soap operas or Johnny Carson myself. I like the mysteries on PBS and nature programs.” She opened the door and stuck her head inside.

  Charlie didn’t watch soaps and neither did Edwina, but Libby set the VCR to record something she called Days to watch after school, and by the time Charlie got home was often still hashing it over with friends on the phone.

  Inside two straight-backed women stared at Charlie with disbelief, obviously recognizing her as the woman questioned in Georgette’s trailer home the night of her murder. And still their eyes kept sliding back to the TV placed in front of heavy drapes that shut out distracting reflection and a view of the Pacific that would be worth several fortunes if located in Southern California.

  The trailer was inexpensively furnished (Kmart veneers and plastic), a little worn, everything in varying depressing shades of brown. Mary, the taller of the two, tried to keep one eye on David Letterman and one on Charlie while setting up TV trays on metal stands. Norma, the plump one, popped a dinner into the microwave and the other into the refrigerator for another meal. The sisters reminded Charlie of birds. Norma’s movements were fluttery, almost apologetic—her expression timid, apprehensive—while Mary’s movements were jerky, her eyes beady and suspicious. It was decided they would accompany Clara to Georgie’s memorial service at the church on Monday. Charlie found herself outside without having said more than “hello” and “good-bye.”

  “They don’t mean to be rude, dear, it’s just not a good time for a visit,” Clara explained and sketched quick biographies of the sisters as if to make up for the fact Charlie hadn’t been able to get anything out of them.

  “They grew up on the coast and after their husbands died decided to combine widows’ pensions and social security and move back. They have something like five grown children between them. Raised their families, one in Eugene and one in Portland as I remember. One’s husband worked on the railroad and the other’s at a grocery warehouse. Those two tend to blend together in the memory so.”

  Charlie wondered if a similar bio sketch of Charlie Greene someday might be, “… never married, one child (smirk), worked as some kind of agent in California, I believe.”

  She left Clara to prepare for a trip up to the birds and headed for the Earth Spirit. Since the deputy had already visited Jack, his place might be a good haven about now.

  But the startling onset of a siren behind her told Charlie her luck had finally run out. A car pulled up beside her and the wind-down of the siren that close to her ear had to be one of the scariest sounds Charlie had ever heard.

  Linda the law sounded scary too. “Your name by any chance happen to be Charlie Greene?”

  “Hi … uh … how you doin’?”

  “Not so great, thanks so much for asking. Now you just slide that sweet little ass into this car before I kick it into the Pacific.”

  Chapter 14

  “Think you’re pretty smart, huh? Following along behind me to places I’d already been, figurin’ I wouldn’t look there again.” The deputy snorted and reported to the dispatcher who linked her immediately with the sheriff. “This is Tortle, sir. I have apprehended the suspect. Want me to bring her in to the courthouse?”

  “Jesus, what took you so long? Can’t do a simple pickup? Your orders to take her to the motel stand. And Tuttle, stay with her. She goes into the crapper, you go into the crapper, hear me?”

  “Sounds like I got you in a lot of trouble.” Charlie grabbed the armrest as the black-and-white-and-blue screeched onto 101 and headed north. Deputy Tortle looked to be close to six foot and every inch was slender, muscular, fit. Right now every inch was also furious. It can be hard working for men in any field, but for a female in law enforcement it had to be something else. “At least you haven’t read me my rights.”

  “Don’t you count on that lasting, lady,” Linda said and her lips continued to move without sound as she probably chewed out Charlie, Wes Bennett, God, and fate. “And don’t figure the sheriff’s so sweet on you, you can get away with what you want. That man puts his work before everything.”

  “Okay, I admit I was working to avoid you. Can I at least tell you why?” Woman to woman? Charlie thought but knew better than to say it. “Suppose you shut me up in the Hide-a-bye and the murderer of Georgette Glick goes about hiding his tracks and planting mine and I can’t do a damn thing about it? Now be honest, what would you do if you were me?”

  “If I was innocent, I’d let the proper authorities investigate and prove that I was innocent and the murderer was guilty, that’s what.”

  “The proper authorities are not out trying to prove my innocence. The proper authorities don’t give a shit about me no matter whatever it is you imagine between me and your sheriff.”

  “If you are innocent, Ms. Greene, we will uncover the facts to prove it.”

  “What if those facts were planted by the murderer to make it look as if I was the murderer? I am trying to defend myself. Is that so wrong?”

  “Then they’re obviously not facts and that will come out in court and your lawyer will defend you.” Linda groaned behind clenched teeth. “Lord save us all from the paranoid.”

  “I am trying to nip this thing in the bud before I need to call a lawyer. Can’t you see that? Wouldn’t you?”

  “You are interfering in a murder investigation, lady, and make no mistake, since you are a suspect that is not going to sit well in places where you need all the friends you can get. Understand what I’m saying?”

  Linda Tortle handled the car expertly even when seething. They shot into the Hide-a-bye drive, but braked smoothly within inches of two startled tourists wobbling up the grade on mountain bikes. Linda’s hair was long and bottle-bleached with a shaggy perm, and corralled in a fall in the back by a comb clip. Charlie wondered how she fit the Smokey the Bear hat hanging from the dash over it. Little red blood vessels ran toward the corneas in the deputy’s eyes, as they did in Charlie’s, to feed them oxygen under contact lenses.

  Heavy clouds tumbled down the Coast Range from the north and Charlie could see rain falling out to sea when they pulled up in front of her cabin. The air smelled of fish and pine and rain. Two suspicious-looking nine-by-twelve manila envelopes lay up against her door.

  Linda picked them up and glanced at the one Charlie carried. “What, you collecting these things?”

  It was Charlie’s turn to groan behind clenched teeth. The maid had been there to make the bed and tidy u
p. She’d closed the drapes on the view and when Linda opened them the sky and the sea blended together in shades of dirty aluminum. Surf frothed against the rocks out on the point. Rain spit slantwise at the windows. Charlie shivered. She hadn’t been warm since she’d left LA.

  Too late to call the office. Sometimes her boss was in on Saturday mornings, but he wouldn’t be there by now. Charlie’s mood was beginning to reflect the weather and she didn’t really want to talk to her daughter or her mother.

  “Great way to spend a weekend, huh?” Charlie matched Deputy Tortle’s glum look and sat at the table to open the ominous envelopes. As she’d suspected there was a completed screenplay from Brother Dennis and a novel proposal from Paige Magill. Paige’s offering had a little note attached—Thought you might like something to read if Wes keeps you shut up in your room this weekend.

  Charlie explained what they were and why she’d been honored with them and stuffed them back in the envelopes.

  “How do you know they aren’t any good?” Linda asked.

  “I just don’t have time for any more clients. And the agency doesn’t handle screenwriters who don’t live in LA.”

  Linda sat in a kitchen chair, long legs stretched in front of her. Everything about her was long—eyelashes, feet, hair, nose, body. She folded long fingers across her belt buckle and stared at Charlie and then out to sea. “Doesn’t seem fair. How do you get clients if you won’t read their stuff?”

  “Referral mostly. And believe me, finding clients is not the problem. Selling the work of those few you can take on is the problem, getting top dollar for it is the problem. There’s so much more product than there is demand, agents are running for cover.”

  “Still doesn’t seem fair. And do you have one single shred of evidence that somebody is trying to frame you for Mrs. Glick’s murder?”

  “Just one. That somebody shoved her body under my car.”

  The sheriff’s deputy studied her so hard for so long, Charlie changed the subject in desperation. “What about you? How’d you get to be a deputy?”

  Charlie had about given up hope the woman would answer when finally Linda said, “I was a secretary in the courthouse when the county law establishment got orders to get some females on line to avoid charges of sexism. Janitors in the building made more money and had more fun than I did.”

  Linda Tortle passed the tests and got the job. She trained to shoot, use a variety of martial arts, think clearly in a crisis, and act tough. “But what I really need is a degree in psychology.”

  The job turned out to be handling female suspects like Charlie, searching women, talking to schoolchildren about the evils of drugs, making brownies for colleagues’ birthdays, trying to sweet talk suicides out of it, nurturing women and children yanked from hostage and abuse situations, delivering news of death and injury to families, and consoling male colleagues who were having relationship or career problems.

  “Or getting too old to get it up on demand?” Charlie asked.

  The deputy choked back a guffaw that bounced her hands on her belt buckle. “I can see you too are a working woman,” she said, but to be safe added, “whatever else you might be.”

  They watched the storm turn the surf angry, roil metallic clouds across a gray sea that thudded against the coast so hard it rattled the windows.

  “Mind if I turn on the TV?”

  “No,” Charlie told her, “but if you do, I’m going to go lock myself in the crapper.”

  “Mind if I use your phone then?” Linda didn’t wait for an answer any more than her boss had last night. “Hello, Peety? Hi, honey, Gramma there? No, I don’t want to talk to her. Just want to be sure you aren’t alone. I don’t know when, but we’ll do something tonight, okay?”

  “You have a kid too,” Charlie said when Linda had finished, and knelt to light the paper log in the fireplace.

  “Yeah. He’s eight. Hottest thing to hit the planet in this century even though his father’s the jerk of the decade. You?”

  “Libby’s fourteen. I’m praying she’s not going to get hot.”

  “God, if Peety’d been a girl I’d of jumped off a bridge. I was hell on roller skates myself and I don’t know how my mom survived.”

  They sat in front of the fire and turned their backs on the cold and storm outside.

  “On second thought,” Charlie said, “I have the written words of three possible suspects in those envelopes on the table. I might not need these writers for clients, but you might find some clues for solving Georgie’s murder. Or at least to get a better feel for these people. It’d be something to do.”

  Brother Dennis had a lot of nerve dropping off a script after insulting Charlie only a few hours ago. She wondered if Paige might do his typing and have had it on hand, left it with her own at Charlie’s door and would tell him later. It was untitled and just had FILM SCRIPT at the top. But it was more of a treatment with some dialogue and camera angles thrown in. It was awful.

  A mature man (Mitch Hilsten was suggested) finds himself alone and destitute on a deserted and unnamed beach, his old van broken down and his spirit with it. (Violins, sea gulls, surf sounds.) He takes a handgun from under a seat in the van and loads it, and as he sits in the sand facing the sea—obviously about to commit suicide—his troubled life flashes before him and the audience. The usual divorce. The nasty wife takes his son from him. He can’t hold down a job. He travels across the country looking for a meaning to it all and ends up on this beach with a gun in his hand.

  And strange things begin to happen. A German shepherd comes running down the nameless beach, licks the nameless man’s face, and knocks the gun out of his hand.

  Charlie read it first and handed it over to the deputy who, when she reached the part about the dog, said, “I feel like I’m reading somebody’s diary.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Charlie told her.

  (Lots and lots of violins.) Dolphins come swimming up almost to the shallows, stand on their tales (sic) and make dolphin sounds. Farther out whales cavort by, spewing joyous spumes. Closer in, sea lions belly along the sand toward him, cormorants dive, pelicans swoop, swallows streak.

  This is where the deputy forgot her determination to remain distant from the suspect and leaned across to slap Charlie’s knee. “And through all this the dog just lays there with his head on the guy’s lap?”

  And then the grand finale (violins cut out and drums take over) and a huge wave builds up, rushes the beach, swamps everything, and for just a moment—through some trick of photography—man, dog, wildlife, beach, and wave blend into one. (Fade out of drums, and a chorus hums some piece Charlie couldn’t even pronounce.) The wave recedes leaving only the man and dog and van, dripping but undisturbed. For the first time, the man wears a smile. His eyes “reveal a knowing, a perception, a serenity and inner peace so unlike the tortured soul he had been earlier.” Fade out with the chorus, fade in with eerie flute music as the camera “backs away” to reveal a pink, rose, and lavender sunset and the man on the beach tossing the gun into the ocean while the dog “cavorts joyously.”

  “We talking box office here or what?” Deputy Linda hadn’t stopped giggling for the last two pages. She slipped the script back into the envelope and wiped her eyes. “How come there weren’t any mermaids? Not even a flying saucer. And no mention of the guy having trouble getting it up. That would have added some pathos there.”

  “Everybody’s a critic.”

  “Brother Dennis is a dreamer all right. But I don’t know what the village would do without the institute.” Linda squinted thoughtfully into the fire. “I keep waiting for the Japanese to buy him out. They bought up Rose’s, you know, let her run it, make her dress up the staff. But she dresses herself sloppier than she ever did just to spite them. At least Jack Monroe’s still holding out. And the Scandia. Japanese own most of the business district, vacant lots and all. Keep wondering what they’re going to do with it. Good thing the lighthouse isn’t for sale.”


  “You seem to know a lot about the village and the people.”

  “I’ve lived in Moot County all my life. It’s not that big. Took a seminar at the institute in one of my weaker moments. Sort of a month of weekends for the employed locals during slack time in the tourist trade. I was still a secretary on a five-day week.”

  “I take it you didn’t become one with the universe.”

  “Nah, it’s sort of like a religion without God. There’s a real strong appeal there though. Idealistic as hell, unattainable, but appealing.”

  “Appealing how? Why is it unattainable?” Why did it seem everyone talked around it, couldn’t explain the theory directly?

  “It’s not the kind of philosophy you can sum up in a sentence or two, or that you can learn in an hour. You are a part of everything, everything is a part of you—rocks, birds, dogs, the universe … so you look at things differently. While you’re under the spell it’s wonderful. But it will never work unless everyone feels that way and is willing to work at it every day, always. It’s pie-in-the-sky, Charlie Green.” Linda hesitated and then met Charlie’s glance head on. “It’s also the only philosophy I ever heard that was complete enough to make sense.”

  “Want to read about Holistic Health and Nutrition for Your Pet by Charles W. Withers, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine? Ought to be a nice contrast to Middle-aged Male Figures Out the Mystery of his Navel,” Charlie said uncomfortably.

  “I don’t know if I can stand any more preaching by that asshole. You know Doc sleeps with ducks in his bed?” Deputy Tortle blinked realization that she was cavorting with the enemy and revealing far too much of her personal life. She grabbed Doc Withers’s proposal, which was probably the only marketable possibility in the bunch.

  Charlie picked up Paige Magill’s novel proposal. It concerned the murder of an elderly woman in a small village and the disturbing dreams of a visitor from Los Angeles, California.

  Chapter 15